Red and Black
by Ashlin Hahn
Summary: They exist on opposite sides of the same coin, taichou and fukutaichou, moving as one imperfect unit. A collection of song-prompted drabbles about the men in charge of the 6th Division. ByaRen.
1. Wherever You Will Go

Disclaimer: I wish they were mine. But alas.

_1. Pick a character, pairing, or fandom you like.  
2. Turn on your music player and put it on random/shuffle.  
3. Write a drabble related to each song that plays. You only have the time frame of the song to finish the drabble; you start when the song starts, and stop when it's over. No lingering afterwards!_

**The Calling - Wherever You Will Go**

Byakuya could never understand the depth and breadth of pure _feeling_ Renji experienced on a daily basis. The redhead felt sadder, happier, better, worse, more loved and far more lonely than ever Byakuya could manage.

Renji, in turn, would never comprehend the stifling force of will that dampened Byakuya's emotions, paralyzed his facial expressions, and kept his soul still. Renji could not begin to understand.

They were together all the time, in the same room, writing on the same papers, going on the same missions, fighting the same Hollows. They existed on opposite sides of a coin, taichou and fukutaichou, moving as one imperfect unit.

But perhaps there was a little more to it than that.


	2. Prodigal

**Porcupine Tree - Prodigal**

Nights visiting Rukongai were the worst. Shuuhei and some others went sometimes, and Renji'd follow out of a strange sense of obligation. It hadn't been home, that place, but it certainly had its memories.

It was vaguely disgusting to him now, what he'd lived in for so long. He'd gone soft through all those years with a real bed. Now the streets seemed beyond dirty to him, they were _dirty_, and the air was past awful and into really _awful_.

The bars in Inuzuri were grey and brown, vomit spread in a thin layer over sawdust floors, but the booze was cheap and the girls had big tits, and so Shinigami visited anyway. They wore civvies rather than their uniforms, and bought liquor till they toppled and added to the delicate concoction on the ground beneath their feet.

When Renji came home to the 6th Division the day after, like the prodigal son, he felt slimy next to Byakuya's crisp white robe.


	3. It's All Coming Back To Me Now

**Celine Dion - It's All Coming Back To Me Now **

Unstoppable will and heat and sweat and panting versus elegance and languid body lines and cold eyes. That's what they had been. They had sparred like that, but then they had _sparred_ like that, and it was the best and clearest that either of them had ever communicated.

Outside of the bedroom, they had behaved simply like heightened versions of themselves. This one was more fiery, showed off more, was more intense; that one had an even thicker wall of ice around him, an even more condescending stare, and ignored his subordinate even more deliberately.

They were exactly the opposite of each other, both distinctly not the other person, and so the end was inevitable. They had stopped.

They _had_ stopped. And yet here they were.

They stood beside Byakuya's bed, comfortable with their familiar nakedness, but when they touched they were shaky, hesitant. As if they were new lovers who knew nothing of how they would react to a finger there, a tongue there, a hand there – that's how they stood.

Little by little, though, they remembered. Their bodies remembered. There was an old rhythm there, and they fell into it, tying limbs easily into ancient knots.

Neither man was particularly prone to forgiveness, but at that moment it certainly felt as though they were.


	4. Ideale

**Romanza - Ideale**

Sakura petals floating on the slow creek. The dash of wind in short grass. A dark-haired man in a light yukata under the cherry tree, leaning, one knee up, relaxed in his knowledge he was alone.

Sometimes, when he was tired or under stress, he wished his senses weren't as heightened as they were. If he were just a little more_ this_ or just a little less _that_, then someday, someone with sharp, stark black tattoos and violently red hair could see him here and catch him unawares. That someone could walk into the scene and clash with everything around him so badly he'd shatter the landscape completely. It would change everything, the dark-haired man thought idly. His world would be forever altered.

But as it was, that person with sharp, stark black tattoos and violently red hair was still a hundred feet away. The man under the tree had felt him coming ten minutes ago.


	5. Already Over

**Red - Already Over**

_Fuckit-- I already-- I lost again--_

Renji saw Byakuya out of one eye and blood out of the other. The captain was unscathed; Renji's knees shook and threatened to give way.

Every time they trained, Renji lost. Spectacularly. Every time they trained, it was Renji on his knees. The blood running down his face matched his hair.

It only focussed Renji more. Every defeat made him work harder for a victory.

_Fuck-- Kuchiki-taichou-- I'm gonna reach you-- someday--_

His vision swam, but he didn't lose consciousness. Anger, frustration, and a deep, vaguely humiliating respect boiled in his veins in a sharp concoction. As always.


	6. You Learn

**Alanis Morissette - You Learn**

Renji hated being second-best, but that's what he was. No matter who it was he lead, whether it was a kid's gang in Rukongai or a Hollow hunting party, he still came in second place.

When he was young, Renji made glowing balls of light appear in his hands, and he wowed his friends with it until Rukia came along and displayed a similar trick with a light-ball twice the size of the one Renji made. She used half the effort.

When he became Lieutenant of the 6th Division, it was an accomplishment, to be sure. And yet, somehow he could not shake the feeling that the Captains were handing him second place to Byakuya's first as if it were the highest honour he could hope to achieve - to be _less than_. He'd resented the Kuchiki for that, too, among other things.

He took second place to Rukia getting a family, and he'd understood it then, but when he understood he was second now to Kurosaki, the rejection hung in his bones.

So when he'd sat with Byakuya after Aizen had defected, whittling in that chair by the door across from Byakuya's bed, he'd had a confession and a proposition to make, for two lonely souls at the top.

He'd learned a thing or two, Renji had.


	7. Bravedancing

**Rachel Sage - Bravedancing**

You say that my arrival in your life shook you. I crashed into your world like thunder. That when you saw Rukia and I together for the first time, everything in you shattered and rearranged itself around _me_.

Well, you didn't say that, exactly. Your language was rather cruder.

I should inform you that this speech you have given is not new to me. I often hear similar things from the sillier young women in Soul Society, and never do I give them much thought. Those girls seem to think I am_ sexually attractive_ and that my nobility and general tendency towards silence is somehow _heroic_. I think them petty, and frankly, not worth my time.

I understand that your saying this is based on much more than my status and my physical appearance. I do understand that. We've spent time together, focused on each other intently, and out of that a connection is born. It is natural.

But under no circumstance will I go to a _Hallowe'en Party_ as your _date_. Now get back to your paperwork.


	8. Champagne Supernova

**Oasis - Champagne Supernova**

There was a secondary reason Byakuya chose Renji to be his fukutaichou.

The primary reason was, of course, that he saw promise in the ex-streetrat, promise and potential for great things. But the secondary was much more subtle, and if the public knew, they would get a far clearer glimpse into Byakuya's character than the Kuchiki heir could ever allow.

Byakuya saw in Renji the need to overtake, to win, and to reclaim what Byakuya had stolen. He saw it and understood it, for that same need was heavy in his own bones, and always had been. He understood, too, that he had taken Rukia from his fukutaichou, suddenly and completely, and the injustice of that sat oddly with him, though it had been entirely within his rights. He was a Kuchiki, after all.

But injustice was not his way. Nor was letting slack the tension of competition with a great rival. That was all that drove Renji Abarai. And thus, though Renji was in no way great rival to him, Byakuya understood.

In giving Renji the position of fukutaichou, Byakuya was acknowledging the part of himself that he saw in the fiery redhead, no matter how opposite they seemed, no matter how they could never understand each other's behaviour. Their goals were ultimately the same.

In giving Renji the position of fukutaichou, Byakuya was giving Renji the chance, just the chance, to achieve those goals. Who knew - if he worked hard enough, he might even accomplish them.


	9. Pretty Women

**Johnny Depp and Alan Rickman - Pretty Women**

Their names were Hisana and Rukia, and they were sisters. That in itself they could have bonded over - their taste in women.

Those women had bewitched them, changed them and shaped them, and though both had left (one wrenched away by disease, the other in love with another man) their effects on the leaders of the 6th Division were no less powerful.

This they could have bonded over, but still it remained unsaid as they sat hunched over papers, neither paying attention to what they were signing, each thinking of a small woman with dark hair, long lost. If they had known their thoughts were following the same track, perhaps the tension could have been dissipated with a round of sake and a comfortable silence. But that would never happen.


End file.
